Synopsis
A film documenting the landscapes of northern Iceland, as well as a recent work about the Hudson River.
2004 Directed by Peter B. Hutton
A film documenting the landscapes of northern Iceland, as well as a recent work about the Hudson River.
it’s just stunningly ethereal and propelled me into deep thought. even with no sound or plot, the time passed quickly. the colors and light and composition make everything seem not of this world.
alienable landscapes abstracted through the lens, ignoring the task of creating a palpable geography instead aiming for a slow cinematic music - this is one of the only films i can think of that translates and understands the poetry found in the friction of the soul and the world around it. stillness and beauty, nothing (and everything) else.
Visualizing the sublime amidst mountain ranges and the heavens above, torn apart by 16mm and left feathering around one another like brush strokes. The monumental is likewise minuscule. We are but a cell of a cell of a cell and so on.
As beautiful as it is frightening.
Murmurs of the terrain, peaks as their wardens, an ageless band.
Meadows unfurl like folios of a bygone chronicle,
beneath the heavens' expansive, ever-shifting shroud. Its rivers wander, their argent serenade,
slithering through dells and prairies, the artistry of the land.
Slopes adorned in tints of viridescent and aureate, colder colder, a tableau painted, a saga to be recounted through the eyes of a freezing spring. Rebirth.
Zephyrs carry tales from yesteryears,
whispers of myths in the soughing foliage.
But who am I to hear these whispering stories, for I am a wanderer simply passing through, to reach the fire within my temple.
film abt landscapes shaped by light and darkness and abt turning those into abstractions so u can feel more than u are able to see. contains at least one of the most haunting images ive seen in a film
I watched this online, ergo I wasn't able to see what Peter Hutton intended, and probably realized. But, I also don't want to see blown-up stills on gallery walls for sale from the film Skagafjordur. The material, the audience, and the filmmaker are all cheated without projection/presentation control. Nathaniel Dorsky is probably right.
Oh, well. It gives me something for which to search.
Traveling the end of the world, through the barren landscapes. Nightmares emerge, your fingers numb, the wind howls. It all starts to fade together. A light shines from above.
watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGBEX-S8AVE
8:48, 22:00, my fav shots
etched in silver. blocks and swathes of color; perhaps one of huttons most modernist films? issues of containment and understanding.
not sure i know why the old hudson footage is interspliced here. all i do know is that i really, really miss that one week i spent learning about the avant garde last year :(
pure landscape films are not my thing but this gets points for trying really hard
passing clouds of stillborn desires
a small strip of land far in the distance
disappears in a mist shrouded curtain wall
and again my mind is condemned to roam
through the land of empty treasures